Maybe I'm the odd one out but I don't see the perpetual need to have the enormous amount of space some folks around here strive for

500GB is way more than I'd ever need. Just as an example.

Then again, I don't store a lot of music/pictures. Mostly just application coding.

Yeah, actually, until I moved overseas and had to convert all my CD music to digital (FLAC files, which use a lot of space), I wouldn't have had such need for so much space.

Now, all my music is played into my stereo via my PC, so I'm glad I have plenty. Having said that, I would never need 16 TB. I have a 3 TB and a 1 TB drive, and a 85 GB SSD for my OS and apps. Even with a lot of video files and music, I've got tons of available space for growth.

Man what do you people store so much on your computers? I don't own a desktop PC anymore and my Ultrabook has 256GB SSD and I have 1.5 TB external HDD plugged into my USB hub at the office and another 1 TB that I carry with me and both have tons and tons of space left even after I have half of the ISO's from my MSDN subscription... Then again I don't download movies from torrent sites often...

Man what do you people store so much on your computers? I don't own a desktop PC anymore and my Ultrabook has 256GB SSD and I have 1.5 TB external HDD plugged into my USB hub at the office and another 1 TB that I carry with me and both have tons and tons of space left even after I have half of the ISO's from my MSDN subscription... Then again I don't download movies from torrent sites often...

For me, lossless and lossy music I've ripped. I have videos from my HD Sony video camera, and pictures from my Canon DSLR. Many ISOs from my old MSDN and TechNet Subscriptions. I have a 17 month old little girl, and we want to preserve these memories in video and photos! But mostly the space is from music.

Perhaps you misunderstood me ? Im not suggesting this be used in enterprise but for home use instead of the pathetic overpriced offerings of synology and qnap

I wouldn't even use them in my home, if it was data I didn't want to lose or wanted to keep the system up and running. I'd rather pay ($199) for an excellent 2 drive Synology that does a TON of stuff, with a warranty and piece of mind knowing it's going to work with minimal setup/administration once you configure it. You get what you pay for, and honestly, if $199 is out of your price range you shouldn't even be dabbling in a setup like this.

I wouldn't even use them in my home, if it was data I didn't want to lose or wanted to keep the system up and running. I'd rather pay ($199) for an excellent 2 drive Synology that does a TON of stuff, with a warranty and piece of mind knowing it's going to work with minimal setup/administration once you configure it. You get what you pay for, and honestly, if $199 is out of your price range you shouldn't even be dabbling in a setup like this.

Do you buy your computers from Packard Bell with recovery partitions for the same reason ?

lol @ $199 for 2 bays You could get 2 SAS expanders for that price with support for 28 SAS drives. Its not that the price is high (typing this on a g19s on a network with clustered HP servers running close to 100VMs) but the fact that for 15$ you can get a card that will run rings around what you get from qnap and sinology... A card which is isn't the best available by a longshot P800 P812 etc but again has 8 ports 512MB cache BBU RAID6 etc

Oh well some people like paying more and getting less I guess. I just want to let people know that there are far far better alternatives than these trashcans and no need to buy WD RED AKA the poor mans SAS drive in order to overcome the limitations of these boxes.

I wouldn't even use them in my home, if it was data I didn't want to lose or wanted to keep the system up and running. I'd rather pay ($199) for an excellent 2 drive Synology that does a TON of stuff, with a warranty and piece of mind knowing it's going to work with minimal setup/administration once you configure it. You get what you pay for, and honestly, if $199 is out of your price range you shouldn't even be dabbling in a setup like this.

Do you replace all of your hardware as soon as the warranty expires? Otherwise, you're operating without a warranty at some point...

Do you buy your computers from Packard Bell with recovery partitions for the same reason ?

lol @ $199 for 2 bays You could get 2 SAS expanders for that price with support for 28 SAS drives. Its not that the price is high (typing this on a g19s on a network with clustered HP servers running close to 100VMs) but the fact that for 15$ you can get a card that will run rings around what you get from qnap and sinology... A card which is isn't the best available by a longshot P800 P812 etc but again has 8 ports 512MB cache BBU RAID6 etc

Oh well some people like paying more and getting less I guess. I just want to let people know that there are far far better alternatives than these trashcans and no need to buy WD RED AKA the poor mans SAS drive in order to overcome the limitations of these boxes.

Additionally, you can carry LSI arrays across to other LSI hardware.. So you don't need to always find the exact card you're using...

Do you buy your computers from Packard Bell with recovery partitions for the same reason ?

lol @ $199 for 2 bays You could get 2 SAS expanders for that price with support for 28 SAS drives. Its not that the price is high (typing this on a g19s on a network with clustered HP servers running close to 100VMs) but the fact that for 15$ you can get a card that will run rings around what you get from qnap and sinology... A card which is isn't the best available by a longshot P800 P812 etc but again has 8 ports 512MB cache BBU RAID6 etc

Oh well some people like paying more and getting less I guess. I just want to let people know that there are far far better alternatives than these trashcans and no need to buy WD RED AKA the poor mans SAS drive in order to overcome the limitations of these boxes.

I think what really devalues your attempt at "help" is the condescending tone that you are so superior to the poor people that are idiots because they don't buy what you think they should buy. If you want to help, share information, just don't sound like an ass.

I think what really devalues your attempt at "help" is the condescending tone that you are so superior to the poor people that are idiots because they don't buy what you think they should buy. If you want to help, share information, just don't sound like an ass.

I try but its hard to keep a straight face when talking about synoligy and qnap selling their dinky cramped boxes for outrageous prices

I try but its hard to keep a straight face when talking about synoligy and qnap selling their dinky cramped boxes for outrageous prices

I definitely don't know enough about the subject to comment on it but it's hard to take your comments seriously when you're basically insulting someone that knows less than you (like me). If you have the knowledge or even a well-formed opinion just try to be respectful about it and it'll go a long ways.

I'm looking for a backup solution but don't want to pay for a QNAP when I have a box that performs all of the functions I would use NAS for. Obviously part of the cost is in its functionality, I literally just need something that can backup multiple sources over my network and nothing more. I could easily throw a couple more HDDs into my main box but this wouldn't protect from a catastrophic failure. It would be good to have something hidden away.

Man what do you people store so much on your computers? I don't own a desktop PC anymore and my Ultrabook has 256GB SSD and I have 1.5 TB external HDD plugged into my USB hub at the office and another 1 TB that I carry with me and both have tons and tons of space left even after I have half of the ISO's from my MSDN subscription... Then again I don't download movies from torrent sites often...

For me it's digital video. I do video production... and a weekend shoot could generate 20-30GBs of material.

In the old days... I had videotapes of the originals. But now... my camcorder generates a bunch of files that I need to keep somewhere.

I have a pair of 2TB Green drives that act as my archives... one drive is a copy of the other. But now they're almost full.

I averaged about 400GB of video a year from my camcorder in 2012 and 2013.

"I realize RAID5 is not a real backup solution but it's good as I can get right now"

No it is not, and you understand the larger your disks and array get, the more likely it is that you wont be able to restore from parity anyway..

What exactly is in your 6TB of data that can not be recovered? Calculate the cost of your parity - you needed a raid card?, you for sure needed to buy a disk that gives you enough space to create the parity. For what - you have clearly stated that you understand raid is not a backup. So you have spent money to hope that if a drive fails you an recover the files from the parity - that may not even work. What if 2 disks die? What if your machine catches fire? Your spending money for backup, that is not even a backup What is that not having to restore from backup buy you - a few hours of your time "maybe" down the road for non critical stuff.. Rather spend that money on beer

And what is so critical in 6TB of data? Unless you say home movies/pictures/something you created then I have to disagree on its critical nature in a home setup. I have the complete Star Trek original series in my library - It would suck having to rerip it sure, would take some time. When was the last time I watched one of those? Would I loose anything if went away? No not really other than some point in the future I would pop the disk back into my computer and rip it to my library again.. Because I like to have it there at my fingertips vs having to pull out the disk, etc. Worse case scenario my house burns down.. Oh #### lost my "backup" media of ST-TOS -- what to do what to do.. Oh wait my home owners insurance, I am quite sure they have 100 if not 1000s to buy still. Oh #### look at that new HD version of ST-TOS on BR.. Well screw my old SD copy, now I have better copy and when I get around to it put back in my library, etc. What was the point of spending money for parity again? I just do not see it in the home sorry.. I would love to hear why you feel the money your short on is was best spent on parity for something that if not online 24/7 looses you what?

So should I spend money on parity to save me possible future time that I may or may not even spend?

Now you know what I can not loose - videos and pictures of my grand daughter.. Should I trust that to raid, F no as we clearly all understand raid is not a "backup" So I have copies on multiple disks in my home, I have copies on optical media both local and my son's house that is 30 plus miles away.. You would hope that any sort of natural disaster would not take out both locations.. Now if they drop a nuke on Chicago - both places prob gone, etc.. Lets hope Amazon storage is online still in that worse case scenario The roughly 100GB of actual critical movies and pictures cost me a whole $1 a month on glacier to have my piece of mind and DR.. When it grows to the point that its more cost effective to back it up with some unlimited for price per year service - then will move it there. Either way the money spent on actual backup of my "critical" files I assure you is way less than the cost of your disk for "parity"..

You mention lack of $, well your method I am fairly sure is $ not very well spent in overall safety of your critical files. And that your storing them on RAID without a backup shows that they are not very critical in the first place - so your spending money that buys you nothing but possible loss of some future time in a rerip, redownload, etc. For someone that has lack of $ this seems less than wise

I realize this is old but I missed this. I didn't need to buy a raid card, I have 8 SATA ports, 4x2TB + 2x3TB (+SSD+Blu-Ray drive), didn't need to buy a drive for parity either, I already had the data on 2x2TBs backed to the other 2x2TBs, so I simply copied the data off to a 3TB while I still had not much data, then created the RAID5 out of the 4x2TBs. I think everyone has different priorities, the data is just not that important, but I would rather not re-acquire it. So I could have 6TB backed to another 6TBs, but I'd need 2 more 2TB drives, plus a SATA port card or RAID card, plus my case won't take more HDDs so a new case, and my power supply is out of SATA connectors (though I could probably use splitters). In certain circumstances, like mine, RAID5 is pretty good. Like I said I had a drive fail and it rebuilt fine, if it fails to rebuild eventually it's not a big deal most of my data are just downloads which I can re-acquire, it's just time and hassle. And I keep the stuff I like the most on the 2x3TBs which are mirrored using robocopy. Seems like you're grasping at straws to make RAID5 look bad, but it can be useful depending on the person and their requirements. Don't look at it as 'omg my data can never be deleted' or 'pfft who cares if it gets deleted tomorrow', think more in degrees of desire to keep it, and offset that by money restrictions. RAID5 fits these perfectly in my case.

Not grasping at anything to make raid5 look bad. Its a great tech, be it 25 years old or not I just don't see it as needed in a home setup. Raid is meant to mitigate down time on hardware failure. All disks will die at some point, this is just fact.

If the data is critical to have online 24/7/365 then raid makes for a great mitigation of loss of time where data is not online. This makes no sense in a home setup - it just doesn't plain simple fact.

Your wife/kids might bitch at you if your media library is offline - to me this does not justify cost of raid.

If you want to create parity for your data to mitigate rerip there are more cost effective way in the home. Unraid is a more cost effective way of creating parity. flexraid, snapraid, zfs all options to help protect you from having to restore from backup in case of disk failure. All of which have plenty of pro's vs your typical hardware based raid5 setup.

As disks get bigger and bigger, and arrays get bigger and bigger the odds of your array even being able to restore a failed disk become less and less likely. Its time to move on and get with current ways to mitigate risk of disk failure is my point. And most of us don't have enterprise budgets to protect our libraries to there are many cost effective ways to go other than raid5.